Posts by Hebe
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Sorry about the mess: this clever piece in Stuff made me laugh, over and over. No small thing in a couple of days when I have suddenly – and surprisingly to me – raged about it all: I have expressed my over-it-ness in a full and frank manner. (Sorry)
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Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
cold snapper coming –
Smoky cold snapper around here.
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Hard News: In the red zone, in reply to Richard Grevers,
The end of the Brighton Spit has moved hundreds of metres over the 150 years humans have been photographing it. There are houses built on “land” which was sea-bed as recently as 1970. Basically, development should never have been allowed on the last km or two.
So Mermaid Place is aptly named?
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Hard News: In the red zone, in reply to Just thinking,
Here's the council link, which will give you other links to get an understanding of what they have done:
http://www.ccc.govt.nz/thecouncil/newsmedia/mediareleases/2012/201210102.aspxThe Cera map of the flood zones:
http://maps.cera.govt.nz/arcgis/rest/services/CERA/CERA_CCC_Flood_Data/MapServerHere's the very good analysis from John McCrone in The Press: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/8744573/Quake-hit-residents-now-face-flood-risk
An interesting thing happened with all that: EQC and insurers were given access to the flood info website in August last year, near three months before property owners could check their own property's details and updated requirements for repairs. At that time and before, Fletchers/EQR were forging ahead with EQC under-cap repairs in flood-zone and neighbouring areas, including major foundation repair jobs. In my area, right near the Heathcote River, the houses were being ticked off methodically.
So people were agreeing to have their houses repaired, including the foundations, under the old rules. If they had been repaired a year later, houses with more than 20 per cent of foundation damage (triggering the need for a building permit to be issued by the council) would have had to be raised by anything up to a metre to comply with the new flood zones.
Raising a house is expensive, which would in many cases push total repairs over the EQC $100k +gst cap and into the insurance companies' arms. So it was, coincidentally, a very good thing for insurers to have Fletchers/EQR sorting out all those repairs quickly.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/7493996/Public-must-wait-for-new-flood-data
In the article above, when The Press asked the council planning people some questions about the flood zones in August, the reply was from the council chief legal officer Peter Mitchell; that is very unusual for a small-time media enquiry.
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Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to JacksonP,
Very cool -- I have never seen a photo even slightly like that one. Love it when someone finds a completely new eye on the world.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Lilith __,
old Moorhouse, keeping an eye on developments.
Prime seat for watching the action.
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Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
Nice fuzzy buds.
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Capture: Upside Down, Inside Out, in reply to Lilith __,
Woolston wonder: I know that place. it's where on the left the old ferry captain's house was (built 1860s and stood until 1993 on three acres then demolished for the newish houses there). I nearly bought the house and land; it was a special stretch of the river. The house was one of those hardly been touched since it was built numbers -- a real crumbling treasure; the gelatine factory was in full stink back then and that persuaded me not to get it. I regret that I wasn't brave.
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Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to ChrisW,
my plum tree
That will be a great crop!
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Capture: Upside Down, Inside Out, in reply to Lilith __,
cold twilight on the Heathcote at Woolston.
Verrry nice. Castle Rock and Witch Hill in the background.Where were you when you took that? It was a golden evening tonight – I saw the rocks at Sumner glow in the way only they can.